KIWI

Category: Contestants2

 

Name: Luqian Chen

NYU affiliation: School of Professional Studies

NYU status: Graduate

Did you enter last year?: No

Do you have any teammates?: No

How many, including yourself?:

 

Concept Name

KIWI

 

High Concept Statement

Kiwi is like Mint — for food. We provide a simple way to help users manage their food waste through their grocery bills data.

 

Status Quo

Managing food is complicated and time consuming. Mismanagement often leads to financial loss and food waste. Concern over easily-spoiled food is among the biggest barriers stopping people from consuming more fresh food as part of a healthy diet.

 

Competition

There are some similar apps in the market like Fridge Pal, NoWaste, and Pantry Check. However, these apps don’t attract many users due to the burden of manual data input.
Outside of apps, Samsung and LG’s smart fridges are expensive (~$8,500) and unready for the mass market. Google and Amazon’s grocery delivery services are potential competitors. They do not offer food management services yet, but they may in the future.

 

Solution

Kiwi will automatically grab their purchase data from grocery stores, easing the user’s input burden. Besides that, Kiwi integrates other features like recipe suggestion based on food you have; creating shopping list based on your eating pattern…

 

Revenue Model

Kiwi is a two-side platform. We will partner with grocery stores (Costco, Walmart, Target) and online grocery stores (FreshDirect, Instacart) who already have access to their customers’ purchase data. We will offer food management service to their members for free. Eventually we will charge grocery stores to integrate their promotions into our recommendations. In terms of social impact: U.S. consumers discard 31-40% of the food they purchase annually – amounts that could feed millions. Our app will track the amount of food we help users save compared to average consumer waste levels.

 

Which platform would you like to launch your app on?

iPhone

 

Which category best describes your app?

Utilities